It is ofcouse a big no no to tell people to click your adsense ads, but is it the same way with the firefox and adsense referral programs? Would be nice if you could tell people that firefox will rule the world shortly and they better join in while they can
I can see why you'd want to be certain about this possible TOS issue. My read of it is that they are hoping webmasters will promote the AdSense referral ads and they expect it. Since they are not CPC/PPC, but more of a CPA/PPA, how can they have heartburn? I do make an effort with the AdSense referral, but just run the Firefox as a typical banner... for what that's worth.
I just run firefox as a banner too, but I'm thinking I could get a lot more conversions if I pushed it a bit. I found this www. make-me-rich .net and he sure is pushing it, so I think I can do it too
You can't encourage people to click the referral buttons, any more than you can encourage them to click ads. You can say vague things like "I recommend you join the AdSense program" and hope they see the referral button on the page, but that's about it.
BTW, I wouldn't get too worried about the referral buttons in general. I don't see them as a great way to make money. Throw them onto your site somewhere if they don't look too out of place (the colors and sizes won't work for every site) and then go back to concentrate on your content and your search engine rankings. You can see my Toolbar Guide for some examples, but really the ads are more important to me than the referral buttons.
The reason I where courious about the referral program was because the forum I maintain is absolutely crap with adsense (something like 8000 impressions and $0.90 in revenue), so I figured that firefox buttons are quite small and unobtrusive and might yield a conversion once in a while. Nice idea with that toolbar guide btw.